


The Salt & the Shadow

by Ria Talla (ronia)



Series: One Quarter of the Stars [7]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Force Philosophy (Star Wars), Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Lanai (Star Wars), Mentioned Luke Skywalker, Nuns, Planet Ahch-To (Star Wars), Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, The Dark Side of the Force (Star Wars), The Force, The Light Side of the Force (Star Wars)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2020-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-10 09:20:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27968201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ronia/pseuds/Ria%20Talla
Summary: Alcida-Auka, Resistance Era/post-The Last JediBecause it was only the Sisters who were made for the Shadow. That was their pride, and so with it they sought the humility of simple work in their lives, to sweep the paths that others walked, cook their meals and light their hearths.Even as the most recent Outsider had refused much of their work, collecting his own food and cleaning his own hut. He had even begun to pick up their words, to thank them, to ask them questions, to weave kind phrases. It hadn't surprised Mother that some of her younger Daughters thought to share the Shadow with him. Yet she had no need to forbid it, as even these Daughters knew that they could not.
Series: One Quarter of the Stars [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1275476
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6





	The Salt & the Shadow

**Author's Note:**

> _Maybe he had leapt from the peak and given his body to the waves. Or perhaps he had surrendered himself and become shadow, dispersing into the light and darkness from which all had been created. The Lanai's songs recalled that both of these paths had been chosen before._  
>  (Jason Fry, _Star Wars: The Last Jedi_ )

Alcida-Auka  
34 ABY

They had burned the Great Tree. The Sisters did not speak this – that was for Mother to say, and in the morning, Mother only remarked that care should be taken to repair and restore any fallen lightning rods. This was how they knew that it was storm, and the lightning, that had burned the Great Tree.

And that it was not. But the Shadow was not spoken.

Mother and the Sisters were late for their morning meal that day, though this wasn't unusual after a Visitors' Night. While it was proper for the Sisters to wake alone in their huts before the suns rose, there was no harm easing this for an hour or two, especially when a storm had raged on the island overnight. Storm or not, the Visitors would have to be back on the sea by the time sunlight hit the water, even if only through a stone-gray sky. Until then, Mother was not too strict. 

That this meal was a quiet one was also typical, though normally after the Visitors came, this had more to do with a sleepless night. This morning, bleary and exhausted as the Sisters might be, the quiet came with murmurs and tense glances. Because the Outsiders were gone, both the spacefarers and the pilgrim. And so was the Great Tree, and one of the Outsider's huts. It had been a vicious storm for the island, the Sisters whispered, if only to each other. Here, Mother also allowed some ease, and a long meal of whispers and glances and impatient stirring, before she finally sets the days tasks. The usual first, washing clothes, collecting dry wood, collecting the nets the Visitors had left along the rocky coast and setting down salt to preserve their catch, until next month. 

Four she tasked with assessing the damage the storm had caused to the village, and to begin making repairs, while two of the youngest sisters were to walk to what remained of the Great Tree to do the same. Among the rest were distributed the daily chores: sweeping the paths, gathering tubers and fungus and berries, preserving and packing away the Visitor's haul, collecting driftwood, straining salt. As was customary, the Sisters left in silence, the youngest of them clearing the long table before they departed for their assignments. 

It was also customary that Mother started her own day by observing the others, but this morning, Mother left this to Sister-Gentu. Sister-Gentu was the eldest of her Daughters, and very close to her in age, as only fifty years or so separated them. She worked closely enough with Mother each day that she did not need to ask how Mother intended to spend her morning, or why she was heading for the food stores. It was a short distance from the village, tucked into a dry cavern cut into the nearby cliff face generations ago, and Mother asked one of the Sisters to bring her a basket and help her fill the woven nest with the remaining salted fish, two bundles of fungus, and a small loaf of Sister-Kiti's dried berry bread. With all of this wrapped and the basket strapped to her back, Mother left her Daughters, and started down the path to the sea. She turned well short of the water. The paths the Sisters kept swept and cleared were only meant for Outsiders, whose claws or feet or hoofs weren't made for the island's slopes, and whose eyes weren't made for the Shadow. 

Because it was only the Sisters who were made for the Shadow. That was their pride, and so with it they sought the humility of simple work in their lives, to sweep the paths that others walked, cook their meals and light their hearths. 

Even as the most recent Outsider had refused much of their work, collecting his own food and cleaning his own hut. He had even begun to pick up their words, to thank them, to ask them questions, to weave kind phrases. It hadn't surprised Mother that some of her younger Daughters thought to share the Shadow with him. Yet she had no need to forbid it, as even these Daughters knew that they could not.

As she stepped from the path, her feet touched the grass like ripples in water. These were the words in the simple songs for novices; ripples in a black ocean, raindrops in the sacred pool. But it was nothing as simple as that. It wasn't like the Visitors, who saw the _salt_ , the movement of the world, fish darting beneath their nets and stone crumbling on the cliffs or even the how the wind turned and rocked the seas. The Visitors knew the salt so well they could be overcome by it, every insect's beating wings, every drip on ancient stone. They spent their lives at sea, as the fathoms between them and the life below gave them a distance they could not have on land. What the Sisters saw was the _shadow_ beneath all things, the part of us that can't be touched.

What the Sisters knew was that we are not the salt.

Mother made her way along the slopes, with no path marked, yet her steps had a deep familiarity. The storm of the previous night had given way to a nearly cloudless sky, Ahch-To's two suns reaching sliding toward their midpoint as she walked. Even without a path, there were some familiar landmarks – the bridge that was nothing more than three taut ropes across a deep but narrow crevice in the rock, the lines of blue-and-yellow wildflowers that only grew far enough from the salt water and close enough to the sunlight, and the low stone cliff that held a collection of nests, a village as ancient as any other on the islands. These were empty in the afternoon, save for colorful eggs and a couple remaining sentinels, who let Mother pass unbothered, she being no predator to them.

Eventually, Mother edged back downed toward the waterline, following the slope as grass dispersed into rock beneath her feet. The incline grew as she descended, yet this seemed to make little difference to her, even with the weight of the basket on her back. A stone's throw from the ocean's surface, she turned from it, and to a small opening in the stone. Small though large enough for someone of her stature, Mother knelt as she climbed into the dark grotto, her footsteps suddenly loud and the air so thick with salt. There was only the sunlight through the cave's opening, at first. Yet Mother moved on, as ahead, footsteps sounded that mirrored her own.

After all, it was the Visitors' way to see her first. He met her at the threshold of a wider cavern, out of reach from the sunlight at the cave's opening, but lit by hanging oil lamps. There were simple accommodations – bedding, a weathered stone table, a set of tools unfurled to one side of a carved wooden plate that still held the bones of a morning meal. Simpler was better when it came to the Visitors, especially one who could not be at sea. Still, even the Visitors were not made for isolation, and Mother could see eagerness in how this one moved, even with the weight he was carrying. They embraced, as was custom, before Mother said, "The Outsiders have left, and we don't expect they will return soon."

"What makes you think that?" It was not the custom answer, but Mother was not surprised. This old grotto was not as comfortable as the birthing hut, and without the same company. Mother moved with him back toward the table, where she cleared away the plate and set out the bread and fish she had brought.

"The sky ship is gone," she said as she worked. Fastener-Idelek helped her, taking away his plate and tools to the pack that had been left open for some time. She thought he might be in such a hurry to leave the grotto that he would pack everything there and then, but he returned to the table, a knife in his hand to slice through the bread. She spoke again when he'd returned."

"And the pilgrim has given himself to the Shadow."

Fastener-Idelek made a noise through his nostrils, like he was clearing out seawater. Mother stayed silent after this, only watching as he cut off slices of bread and rent flesh from bone. She made no motion to eat herself while he did. The food was, really, meant for him, as he would be the one carrying the weight of all of them along the trek back to the village. But after the Visitor is well into his meal, she does ask, "How is the child, then?"

He puts down his knife. Even in his mood, he gives the question the dignity it deserves.

"Fortunate, I think. To be born in the sunlight, among the Sisters, after all."

At last, Mother reached across the stone table, and picked up a crust of the bread. "Every child that grows is fortunate. But it shouldn't be more than a few days now."

He picked up the knife again, rending a spread of flesh from fish bone. "No disrespect, Mother, but the Sisters are better company than what's going on in here. Do you really think all of this was necessary this time? The village is still standing, right?"

Mother slowly chewed through her crust, then reached for an untouched fish, not bothering with a knife. "The Outsiders did some damage. I do not think any of them meant us harm. 

"But they are changeable and strange in a way we are not. It's better not to try to anticipate the ways they may turn."

He didn't look up from his fish. "Is that what your Mother taught you?"

"No," she answered. "I remember it."

This does make him look back at her. The Visitors and the Caretakers spent nearly all of their long lives apart, and in what time they did have together, sharing and reminiscing was mostly kept to the Visitors. It was the Caretakers, after all, who memorialized, who preserved. Memories of land were of little use on the sea. And yet, as Mother now found, that didn't always weaken interest. "What was it?"

"Fire, and chaos," she answered. "We still knew the island better, how to run, so that we could flee the red light they wielded at us. The Visitors were safe on the seas, so we hid until they were satisfied, and departed again."

"I don't understand," he said, as he collected up the knife and plate to pack them away, "what some fire and chaos are to the Sisters."

"And that is why you are not one," she called after him. 

Mother helped Fastener-Idelek pack away what belongings were still scattered around the cave, his bedroll, flint pieces, changes of clothes. These all went into her pack, which she strapped to her back as she had the food. He would already be carrying quite enough, after all. And from then on, they didn't speak. It was back out the grotto and into the sunlight, those suns now dropping toward the sea. Mother needed to be back before nightfall, and so they wasted no time making their way along the cliffs and slopes, while the Visitor walking with much less grace, not just due to the weight but also limbs that were far more used to a rocking boat.

And there were many dangers to walking the islands. The Sisters knew the safest paths, knew how to avoid deceptively narrow ledges and when to step lightly along loose rock. But they knew above all else that there is only one absolute – and it is not one of safety. One danger well-known to all who lived along the slopes were the high rock peaks that for as long as they had risen above the sea had been slowly hewn away by torrents of rain. In the right moments, fissures crumbled through the stone, and pieces broke off. The paths along the islands were carefully plotted to avoid this risk as much as possible, but straying onto the deep slopes left any being much more vulnerable. As careful and as sure as they may walk their paths, the island will always hold untimely dangers. And as Mother and Visitor walked back to their village, the danger that came for them rattled above, a weathered mound of rock that had, after centuries, finally slipped loose.

Now the Lanai were not tall compared to other beings, and a rock tumbling down the mountain would not need be very big to one off their feet and on to a long fall toward the ocean. Such a danger was also often not very loud, until it is too late to act. Of course, the Lanai were not like other beings in how they saw and what they heard. And Mother had only recently spend far too much time in the company of a destructive but hapless Outsider, whose chaos she was careful to permit, as must be the case for all Outsiders. 

Most Outsiders, and the Visitors, had their own ways to protect themselves – they could see the danger without their eyes, how its matter approached them, and reach out beyond their own reach, into the matter of the world around them, to slow it, to halt it. This is what the ancient songs called the _salt_ , the material of their world, and their power in it. They touched the salt of the world, manipulated it and cut the lines of cause and effect that would otherwise determine their paths. A rock that slips from a mountain peak must tumble down the slopes until it reaches one end or another. Unless, of course, it doesn't. 

But the rock did not stop. Because this was not the Shadow. The salt told the Visitors of the matter of the world, its shape and form. 

The Shadow told the Sisters there was no world. 

There was no rock. There was no slope for it to tumble down, no crude flesh for it to smash through. And when Fastener-Idelek heard the danger barreling down on them, stopping instinctively to flinch, to look up, but too late to reach out to it, he barely saw the rock before it did collide with them. And he turned once more to watch it tumble onward, down along the slopes and toward the sea, having slipped through them as though they were no more than a sheet of water. 

When he looked up, Mother had stopped ahead of him. She turned, silent, maybe waiting for him to speak. But he said nothing. And once he moved along, she did the same.

The Sisters were excited to see him upon their return. The younger ones surrounded him, leading him back to the hut where he would stay until he was ready to return to the sea. Only Sister-Gentu stayed behind with their Mother, perhaps quicker to notice the weariness with which their Mother carried herself. As no matter the serenity the Sisters might like to project, it was no easy thing to touch the Shadow.

And tonight, there were still many hours before the Sisters' could rest. Sister-Gentu took on the pack Mother had carried, as her own task had meant no chance to supervise the mid-morning and afternoon chores. Instead she checked for the patched roofs of huts that had been damaged in the storm, for linens pinned to the rows of clothes lines just beyond the village, for newly stocked stores of salted fish and collected berries. The young Sisters she had sent to the Tree reported what she had suspected herself – that the it was destroyed beyond recovery, that there was nothing in its remains to save, but the large base of its trunk was charred but intact. 

The evening meal was taken in shifts, depending on when the Sisters finished their work. Attendance was looser than in the morning, and Mother saw more than one of her Daughters take up some fish and tea and make their way to the Visitor's hut. But tonight, Mother missed it entirely, instead stopping her work only long for a cup of tea to sustain herself. And then she took up a broom, and swept along the steps up from the village toward the old Altar. This was all the more unusual, as Mother almost always liked to attend to her Daughters before nightfall. On this night, however, she needed to prepare herself. As the Sisters had always known, it was simple work that settled a stormy mind.

It was twilight when she reached the summit. There was a haze of light along the arched stone, and she brought her broom to sweep any remnants of leaves or debris that had gathered during the storm. But there was very little. The pool at the center was clean, clear, and still. She ventured slowly beyond it, to the ledge where she had seen more than one stranger sit for hours beneath the suns, the moon – despite everything she knew, to her, they had always looked to be waiting for something. And then, some of them left, as this pilgrim had. She thought she might find some piece of him left behind, something left to release, but she found nothing. There was, as there would always eventually be, no sign the pilgrim had ever walked this world.

The Sisters did not sing at this Altar. Yet Mother returned to it, the pristine, unchanging pool. The ancients had pressed stones below the pool's surface, alternating, black-and-white, to make a figure like themselves. The Sisters knew of the way the ancients and their descendants saw their world, the "dark" and the "light." That one was embraced, and the other feared. That those who touched the "dark" were those who brought fire and chaos to the island, and the Sisters fled, so that those creatures enraged by the Shadow would never what they knew of it. There was only so much the Sisters could learn, deduce over generations, even generations that lasted centuries. But the long accepted conclusion was that these creatures despaired at the Shadow, at the cold and empty truth they felt within it.

The pool stayed still even as the wind picked up, and Mother swept away from it. Not even the slightest ripple broke across its surface. Of course the Shadow is cold, Mother thought. A void cannot be warm.

This time, when Mother returned to the village, the Sisters were quick to gather to her. Night had fallen fully and torches were lit around the huts, flickering in the wind. The Sisters took her broom, and wrapped a shawl around her. It was growing colder, but the sky was clear, and the waning moon would lend light for much of their way that night. Mother counted them up; she saw one more in the distance, silhouetted by the lamplight from a distant hut. But then she realized this was Fastener-Idelek. Watching them leave, but drawing no closer.

This was wise of him.

This Sisters, all of them drawn together, departed the village as one. They followed Mother, as their gathering place on these nights always started as a secret. On this particular night, however, it had been clear since morning where they would be headed. Mother could see her closest Daughter, bearing a torch at her side, stepping carefully to stay behind. Even if they were not to speak of it, Mother was sure it had been on their minds all day, as it had been on hers. After all, they had burned the Great Tree. And so the Great Tree would need to burn.

Chatter grew among the Sisters as they walked, and though the night fell darker and colder, the cold seemed to touch them less. They clung less to their shawls and hoods, moved faster, talked louder. Mother did nothing to quiet them, and by the time the reach the right slope, the group was alive with chatter and even bursts of song, remnants of other nights floating like bits of ember in the air. They began to spot charred debris as they approached, pieces of the tree that must have been blasted off, and they collected these up as much as they could, carrying any twig or splinter or fractured slice of bark and staining their skirts with ash. 

What they reached was an enormous trunk, blackened and hollowed and yet still not gone entirely. The sisters emptied their skirts of the twigs and bark they'd collected at its base, forming a half-ring of kindling around what was left of the Great Tree. Their talk dissipated as they worked, winding down until there was only left a quiet hum among them, as they gathered themselves into well practiced lines that half-encircled Mother, much like the kindling circled the tree. And then they waited, lapsing into silence.

It was their silence, at first. Before it bled beyond them. First the rustling of the wind over grass, among leaves, through the flames of their torches and even against their ears and skin. Then the crackle of the flames, the soft click of insects, the flutter of birds still soaring between the cliffs above. And finally, slowly, the sound of the waves below, slamming up against the rock. All of it drained away, into nothing, into silence, into the Shadow. The Sisters felt nothing, heard nothing, as the Shadow took all. As it always would. And that was what had to be understood, first and foremost, of the Secret Songs. The Visitors heard the constant roar of life, loud and bright and churning all around them. 

The Sisters hear the void, and that is why they sing.

And what is a song in the void? Every Sister might describe it differently, though all would begin with the dark, the world leaking out of them, until the silence of it pressed on their eyes, their ears, they no longer smelled the salt water or felt the wind on their faces, they stood alone, completely, in the night. And then an ancient, and familiar call, like those of the birds that still flew along the cliffs of the island, it pierced through the dark and woke each Sister to the songs. 

They might have woken to a storm, sliced by cold wind and drowned in thunder that smashed through all it touched. Or to white hot fire, the bright ring along any flame that consumed first and most ferociously. And to some, the songs were screams, high whistles of air escaping crumbling bark, the shattering roar of the ocean smashing stone, the shriek of prey wrangled desperate and thrashing in a predator's claw. And to some there was still silence, pressed loud against them, an emptiness that could not be spoken, but may only be sung. These were the harmonies that wove into the night, as the torches flickered out but their voices burned until the sun rose.

Who could say what had happened to the Great Tree when the Songs were done? That it was rotted and washed away, burned anew, its ashes scattering in the grass, or even that the charred remnants had unwoven themselves out of being. The ancient island heaved and rattled as the Shadow erupted through it, swallowing up what the Sisters offered, until the hill that had for millennia bore the Tree and the wisdom within it now was left only with a fine coat of dust. The Shadow claimed all, as it had always done, and the Sisters, breathless, exhausted, and yet, still softly singing, gathered around Mother and helped her to her feet. They departed as one, as they had come, as dawn passed and the suns climbed higher above the ocean below them. There was rest to be had, and work to do.

And for the first time in many thousands of years, on the hill where there had once been the Great Tree, sunlight touched the seeds that would have rotted in its shadow.

**Author's Note:**

> _Alcida-Auka –_
> 
> _All right, I do like narratives of seemingly humble beings hiding awfully powerful secrets._
> 
> I know just I used the 'shadow' imagery for Ahsoka, but I was inspired by exactly those three sentences from _The Last Jedi_ novelization and uh, very much did whatever I wanted to from there. (For instance, I know in the novelization it says the Lanai did find Luke's robes, but the movie showed them blowing away in the wind, and I liked that better.) And yes maybe I wanted to give the Caretakers a little more to do than, I guess, taking care of the Jedi's stuff, and grew attached to this idea of a Force-attuned species that divided itself through the ways in which one was attuned to the Force, and had a very different view on that Force than we've seen from others. 
> 
> Also, this is the last fic I'll be writing using alphabetical order for character selection, from now on I'm going to switch between writing for a character I already have an idea for and using a random number generator. Because. Just. I need that.


End file.
